Broccoli Gets Respect in Health-Care Arguments

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Broccoli, the nutrient-rich
vegetable derided by President George H.W. Bush two decades ago,
found respect at the U.S. Supreme Court during debate on the
federal health-care law.

The often-steamed cultivar, part of the cabbage family, was
mentioned eight times yesterday, as Justice Antonin Scalia,
Chief Justice John Roberts and Solictor General Donald Verrilli
argued about the reach of insurance mandates during a second day
of debate on the law pushed by President Barack Obama. Bush, in
1990, declared “I don’t like broccoli.”

The United Fresh Produce Association, a trade group for the
fruit and vegetable industry, welcomed the attention without
weighing in on the debate, an issue in the 2012 campaign.

“From banned in the White House to the chambers of the
U.S. Supreme Court,” said Ray Gilmer, spokesman for the group.
“Broccoli is getting respect.”

Eating more broccoli may lower medical costs because of its
wealth of anti-oxidants, abundant Vitamin C and presence of
cancer-fighting nutrients such as sulforaphane and
diindolylmethane, Gilmer said.

Broccoli has been part of the health-care debate since at
least late 2010, when U.S. District Judge C. Roger Vinson asked
David B. Rivkin, outside counsel who argued against the law in
December 2010, whether the government’s view would allow
regulation of any behavior with an economic impact.

“They can decide how much broccoli everyone should eat
each week?” Vinson asked at arguments in Pensacola, Florida.

Broccoli, Cadillacs

The vegetable reference returned in May 2011, when a three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, was asked to consider whether
requiring Americans to buy insurance is the same as ordering
them to buy broccoli or a Cadillac.

Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has suggested the
health-care law means consumers can be forced to buy broccoli.

Scalia and Roberts picked up the references to broccoli as
they questioned the requirement that consumers buy insurance or
face a tax. Along the same lines, they said food is something
everyone has to buy sooner or later. “Therefore, you can make
people buy broccoli,” Scalia said, challenging the arguments
made by the government’s lawyer.

Verrilli, defending the law, said health care and broccoli
differ because medical services, unlike food, often are needed
unpredictably and often involuntarily.

The justices and lawyers yesterday also used bologna,
bread, cows, wheat, dairy, farms, geese, meat, milk and soup in
making arguments.

Bush banned the vegetable from Air Force One and the White
House in early 1990, telling reporters he disliked the food
since he was “a little kid and my mother made me eat it.”

“I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to
eat any more broccoli!” he declared in March 1990.

California broccoli growers then shipped 10,000 pounds of
the vegetable to the White House, which was donated to homeless
shelters and soup kitchens for Washington’s needy, according to
the Associated Press.